Rage Is a Spectrum (And One End Is a Bear)
The Berserker is the barbarian you picture when someone says “barbarian.” It is the class’s answer to the question nobody asked: what if the Hulk, but with a bonus action? Frenzy gives you an extra melee attack on your bonus action during a rage, which sounds straightforward until you remember you get this at 3rd level, two whole levels before Extra Attack comes online for most martial classes. The cost is a level of exhaustion when your rage ends, which stacks every time you use it. Once or twice in a long adventuring day is survivable. More than that is a bad time. See the episode on status conditions if you need a refresher on why exhaustion is not something to shrug at.
Mindless Rage at 6th level is the sleeper hit of this subclass. Immunity to the charmed and frightened conditions while raging sounds like a ribbon, but consider how many high-CR creatures, dragons especially, lean on Frightful Presence as a primary action economy disruptor. It also suspends active conditions, meaning you can pop a rage to shake something off, even if it clamps back down when the rage ends.
The Totem Warrior is a different animal entirely, sometimes literally. Where the Berserker hands you more violence and steps back, the Totem Warrior asks you to make choices at 3rd, 6th, and 14th level across three animal archetypes: bear, eagle, and wolf. The animals are templates, not mandates. An elephant works as a bear. A hawk works as an eagle. Build the fiction around your character’s origin and let the mechanics follow.
The Animal That Actually Breaks Your Brain
Bear totem at 3rd level gives resistance to all damage except psychic while raging. All of it. That includes magical weapon damage. Combine that with the 14th-level Totemic Attunement bear ability, which passively imposes disadvantage on attack rolls against anyone that is not you, and you have a character whose entire job description is “please hit me instead, I can take it.”
Eagle’s 14th-level ability is the one that makes people do a double-take. You get a flying speed equal to your walking speed while raging, except you fall at the end of your turn. It is flight in six-second increments, which means it is less “soaring” and more “extremely aggressive jumping.” It is still flying. Over walls, over pits, into the face of whatever is standing at the back of the room thinking it was safe up there.
Wolf is the team player. At 14th level you can knock large or smaller creatures prone with a bonus action on a hit, no saving throw, no DC, just down. Prone creatures can only crawl at half speed and take disadvantage on attack rolls, while everyone adjacent to them swings with advantage. You cannot do it every attack since it costs your bonus action, but once per turn on a guaranteed knock is still an absurd amount of fight control for a class that is supposed to just be punching things harder.
If you are unsure which totem to start with at 3rd level, take the bear. Resistance to nearly all damage while raging is a baseline that every other choice is competing against.